Acts of Mutiny

by Derek Beaven

  On the third day Mr Chaunteyman told me that Mrs Torboys had to go to the doctor that morning, and then, realising what he had said, made me promise not to repeat anything to my mother. He took me to the Tiger Balm Gardens. Painted concrete figures of, yes, torture and fun. And in the evenings of that lyrical and fraying week, having travelled back on the bus, I would hang about the muddy alleys of Changi village itself, looking for trinkets in the Chinese shop next to the thatched longhouse – where some Malayan families lived on stilts. Behind that there was nothing but authentic jungle. We stayed six days and then flew out by RAF Transport Comet for Adelaide, Mr Chaunteyman’s business, whatever it was, no doubt complete. My account is thus wrenched high out of my control.

  57

  I throw up my hands at this point. So much is all I know. That’s all I can tell you. As to the Armorica, she must have gone on, in her own way, to Australia. As I went in mine with Erica and Mr Chaunteyman – until we fetched up as I told you near a dump near a crossing, in a cheap rented cabin with splitting walls, marooned. And so my travelling companions dispersed towards their joys and tragedies half a century ago.

  As for the loss of record, the missing documentation; no doubt an administrative blunder on some register when the ship was broken up. Most likely an early computer error which became perpetuated. Very probably some day I shall come across an old book of the fifties in which she figures in all her glory. For the present she is a mystery; but a minor one. Hardly a Marie Celeste, since it is the ship which is missing, rather than its crew; and the only witness I can supply is myself. As reliable as you may judge. But whatever opinion you form of me, there, in a sudden flight out of Singapore Island it must end. There, in a vapour trail, I must wash my hands of it.

  Why then does my recollection of Adelaide flash and streak? That prim, sun-drenched city is established in my mind’s eye – focused, clear as a consequence. Yet, like the picture on an old television set, it gives way now and then. Its bright parks and suburbs are troubled with sheets of flood and inexplicable rain. Its seaside bask is shot through with cold and despair.

  Of course there was occasionally rain, sometimes torrential. It could feel cooler, and sharper. But my sense is not of that. It is as though one image is at the mercy of another: inside the water an invisible fire lies. This is not bushfire, that common hazard of the tinder dry, but of something else, smouldering deep down. It is electrical, hydroptic. I cannot tell you about Adelaide without the thought of something terrible happening out at sea. I have four memories.

  In the first, I am at a beach. Glenelg, or is it Largs? Men stand outside the hotel bar in their relentless formality of suits and trilby hats, holding empty glasses; across the wide empty road, they lean in ones and twos on the barrier which fences off the beach. The Gulf of St Vincent lies silky green and languid under the glare. Past the curl of desultory wavelets breaking on to the sand, past the paddlers and the few bathers, the pointless wooden pier stretches out towards the horizon, only stopping short at a little makeshift stand with a bleached roof. The children see dolphins and come haring back along the planks to press the shark alarm. Then, to the sound of hooter-whoops, a mother picks up her toddler and strolls out of the sea. It is roasting weather, yet I am shivering desperately, unable to get warm.

  In the second, someone drives us across the level plain from the port to the township. We have been on a day-trip to see the yachts. The stink of the canning factory hangs in the air. But looking back through the rear window, instead of those two rust-streaked tower vats raised up out of the flat brown there is the nose of a ship. It stands up vertical, in silhouette, like the towers themselves – and all the ground is awash, as though tiny Dry Creek had burst its banks.

  Then, the opening day of the new term, my new school. The headmaster lifts his brown hat to dust his brow. He has fierce tufts of greying hair. There are about a hundred children in the centre of the compound. The headmaster has a cane under his arm.

  On the one side stands the cement-white school block, two storeys high. On the other, the concrete shed for lunches. Cement dust is everywhere; it has whitened the hard, bare ground so much that the morning sun glares up into our faces and we screw up our eyes. Builders’ rubble lies in heaps; their machinery is dotted about near the perimeter wire. Beyond that a few huge gum-trees stretch up out of the clay. At least they cannot be new. For everywhere here, whether inside the school compound or beyond, looks to my eye half-finished; because there is no tarmac, nor concrete paving-stones, nor green grass. It is as though they have put down odd buildings and forgotten to build streets.

  ‘I want all the Catholics over here.’ The headmaster marches to a region over by the shed. A gaggle of children follow him. ‘Presbyterians?’ He paces to the front of the new block. Then nearer the wire. ‘All Anglicans over here.’ Another clump of young bodies – those who know what Anglican means – surges towards him. But he is off again, trouser cuffs flapping round his ankles. He calls the Methodists to the cement-mixer, the Lutherans to the workmen’s shelter, the Baptists and Anabaptists to the pile of breeze-blocks, and the Unitarians to where the bicycles have all been lain down, like a desiccated herd of cattle.

  When I am the only one left, nearly crying in the middle, he waves me towards the Anglicans, and I am saved. I see just outside the perimeter a different tree, alive with blossom. On every blossom hangs a milkweed butterfly, feeding, flickering. I am on the Armorica again. My bone-dry clothes are soaked with downpour; the tree has burst into flames. Each butterfly is an explosion. We are wrecked and there will be no help for us – for all the water in the ocean.

  Last of all, Erica and I are on the veranda of the crack-walled house. When the north wind blows in the afternoon it feels as though an oven door has opened behind the thin strip of houses on the other side of the road. Now there is a red tinge to the clouds.

  ‘You see that? Here we go again, Ralphie. Let’s get the windows shut.’

  Then quite high up the sky streaks with rouge. Before too long there is a dark, red-coloured shadow, looming from the northern sweep over the low roofs opposite. It spreads out. Soon its wings stretch as far as the crossing one way, and right behind the hills the other.

  The first fingers of grit come at us, thrusting through the bungalows. They whip our faces and we are driven inside. From the window we watch the full storm build. By a quirk of the air currents there is a succession of dust-devils like pillars of fire, up the dirt road from the crossing. That is the advance guard, stalking sideways. Then the main force hits us full on and we are no longer in any doubt about its intentions. Blasting and stinging at the glazing and brickwork it is like a red mist that has gone out of its mind. It is Australia on the move, all furnaced up, lifted from the rocket-range deserts beyond the black stump and brought down by the baking wind.

  Afterwards there is a mess, and we have to clear away, brush off, shovel out, while the wind is set to broil on for another three or four days. Yet I see myself bailing out water instead of sand in the downpour, and the red cloud is a drift of ship smoke on the horizon.

  This is a madness of picture postcards. I have become distracted. I believed I had told you everything: of my home in Woolwich, my career. I outlined my service in the Falklands, to make sense of things. I have given you my childhood’s voyage, over half the world. I have confessed to the burnt-out Holden. I have said much, much more than I knew at the start – of love, and my father, and the best room. I told you as clearly as I could how we jumped ship at Singapore.

  Then why will the story not arrive at its destination: aboard the Comet next to Erica, clutching my Reader’s Digest Condensed Book from the hotel? However hard I try, I cannot make that plane go south – from Changi to Darwin, and then on to Adelaide’s Edinburgh Airport. The direction is all wrong – a mental compass is awry; and I cannot place Mr Chaunteyman with us at all.

  There is a faintness and nausea. I have the sensation once more of hanging, without a body, without a hist
ory, above the whole thing – high up with the great seabird, adrift on the upper currents, the albatross, the booby, the frigate bird, or even the legendary roc. It is a terrifying drop. I am returned willy-nilly to our dalliance at Singapore, the row, Chaunteyman’s silver-screen looks, and the mention of Lucas’s new venture. I have deliberately muddled the sequence in my mind. It did not happen as I have described at all.

  I see now that I have constructed my whole life precisely in order to avoid seeing. Yes, there were the rows, but Erica did not prevail. Yes, I gave Mr Chaunteyman the shrunken head. But it was at our parting, to protect him from a Changi I had not yet visited; did not visit, in fact, for more than a year. Yes, Erica wept in the hotel there, but not on this trip. That was on our return to England, and my memory has tricked me, matched one set of weepings to another.

  I have done it before – left out a whole ship. I told you that tale at the start about my battle stress, little thinking that was the regular way of things. Let me make this quite clear. Come alongside me, I have it now. I went out through Singapore on the Armorica; I flew home through Singapore more than a year later. In my premature account of Changi I have confused the two, laying the one direction on top of the other and marrying the events – shaving off loose ends, as we story-tellers will without knowing it. We fool ourselves as well.

  Memory can do just that. Does it all the time. I have not wilfully deceived you. Memory hides whole coastlines, tampers with truth. It spares us pain. It takes away the hurts that cannot make sense, that go against everything we know to be right and regular. Memory is the doctor. But under its drug there is no real home-coming, no prospect of release, no hope that in spite of everything Carla …

  I did not leave the ship at Singapore.

  58

  In fact we must sweat our way through the islands. The sky is an upturned drum with its sodden skin sagging upon us. It bellies over our foremast, touched with an unpleasant green as the sun tries to finger through. Perspiration runs from every pore, and we have hardly the energy to move. There is a hint of mould: it settles on rope ends, makes straw hats limp. Tobacco smoke leaves a stale, whiffy flavour in the main lounge and in the bars; and every carpet begins softly giving back its accumulated spills. Many people keep to their cabins.

  It was in the Java Sea, the Sea of Whispers, that I detected the plan against Robert.

  ‘You don’t need to tell me. Give them an inch and they’ll take a mile.’ The two old men passed me, struggling on, identically dressed. ‘Damned poor show. Probably Communist inspired. Chinks.’ Their dark blue shirts were plastered to their backs.

  ‘Damned poor. Reds. Know what I’d do?’

  ‘I jolly well know what I’d do.’

  A moment later, I nearly bumped into Mr Barnwell, no longer in uniform.

  ‘Sorry, sir.’

  He scarcely gave me a second glance, but strode on down the port strip of the promenade deck, towards the aft stairs. I followed. Another man, whom I did not know, emerged to greet him from the region of the pool. They stopped and spoke together. I made out some of the words: ‘Once we’re in open sea … In the nature of the job … Thoroughly deserves everything he gets. It’s a thorough nuisance, but I was speaking to Jeremy, and he said the idea was perfectly feasible, and probably the best thing in the long run … Take care of the practicalities.’

  ‘All right. We’ll see what we can come up with.’

  ‘To encourage the others, principally. It’s a worry, otherwise.’

  ‘There’s a serious risk then?’

  ‘Hardly. I wouldn’t go quite that far. Just needs to be fixed.’ They passed out of sight.

  Erica was listless in her bunk, and nagged at me.

  ‘They’re out to punish him,’ I said.

  ‘Shut up. I’m the one who’s being punished. And what’s more he knows it. He wants me to be like this. They’re all so … perverse.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Perverse. It’s a word. You don’t know it. Why not go and find someone to play with.’

  ‘There isn’t anyone.’

  ‘Of course there is. Why must you be so difficult, Ralphie? Can’t you see I’m upset. Go and play ping-pong, for heaven’s sake. Find that girl, what’s-her-name. Only leave me in peace, can’t you. Moping around, in here. Fidgeting. And for Christ’s sake stop that tapping.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘Of course you are.’

  Finlay and a knot of other children were in the dance space. They had colonised the ping-pong table for some other game. But it was nothing much. ‘You go there and I’ll go here. No, not there. There! I’m not playing, then.’ ‘Can’t we play Dragnet?’ ‘That’s old hat. Anyway, it’s too hot.’ Apparently there was no consensus without the Torboys children.

  I pressed on past the looks, taking the stairs up to the observation lounge. Finlay’s parents were there with their son Mitchell, who seemed suddenly grown-up in long trousers. Russell and Clodagh sat at coffee in the recliner chairs; their legs were up on the padded stools. I stood behind them for a moment, looking out. A coastline was in view to starboard. I fancied I could quite discern the great fat leaves of palms, see huts on stilts and the native boatmen putting out in their praus to attack us with spears and krises, spitting betel until we would buy their sweet-sour pigs, gutta-percha, cloves and bird’s nests. But of course I could not. The coast was little more than a dark green line of jags that sloped down in a wedge to the steamy pond we were caught in.

  On the foredeck the Leviathan seemed to speak very distinctly. It was horrible. We were heating up. I must find Robert. Feeling sick, I searched the length of the ship.

  A group of ladies and gentlemen stood on the pool concourse behind the Verandah bar, where the cane tables were set out. One woman said to another that she thought Saturday would be best. ‘Otherwise before we know it we’ll be docking in Remade. It would make an example of him.’

  ‘You know, I shan’t mind when it’s over and done with. This is all so oppressive. Don’t you think so? I never imagined I’d say that, but actually, yes, I shall be quite glad. He has it coming. Then we can get back to normal. Pick up the pieces, if you know what I mean. My husband hasn’t been himself at all. He positively hates it.’

  ‘Excuse me. Have you seen Mr Kettle?’

  ‘Mr who?’

  ‘Mr Kettle.’

  ‘You know, Olive, the one who …’

  ‘Oh, him. No. Sorry. I expect he’s …’ They laughed.

  A man in a blazer was smoking a cigar. ‘Mind where you’re going, young shaver. You’ll have yourself over the side if you’re not careful.’

  I did another circuit of the ship, combed it from stem to stern and from top to bottom. But Robert was not to be found. In fact it was strangely empty – compared with the normal hustle and bustle. The heat. I stole past Penny’s cabin. The quartermaster and the steward who acted as his assistant in the entertainments were facing each other at the end of the corridor. There was some disagreement. The one had hold of the other’s wrist.

  ‘I saw you.’

  ‘You bloody didn’t.’

  ‘Quiet.’

  ‘You never told me. That’s what sticks in my throat.’

  ‘Quiet. Not long now, anyway. Not long now and it’ll all be over.’

  ‘What about the blood?’

  ‘There’ll be no blood.’ Their heads both turned in my direction, then the pair of them seemed to melt away around the end of the panelling. I checked they had gone and then went back to Penny’s door. There was no sound; but this time I dared not go in. Besides, if Barnwell and the captain were holding him somewhere it was hardly likely to be here. From another direction altogether came the plaintive call. Perhaps that was Robert crying and not the Leviathan at all. I tried to locate the sound more precisely, and to follow it. It led down and down – only to leave me pressed against the mahogany partition at the aft end of D deck, where, yes, it was a fraction louder. But my sweat made me clammy.
r />   I ran back up the succession of stairs to the concourse.

  ‘I thought it was quite disgraceful. I’ve an idea to ask for our money back.’

  ‘The crew are in on it, of course. Regard it as their perks. Get a kick out of it. Have you seen the way that tall chap looks at one? You simply can’t be too careful.’

  ‘Human nature. To want to watch, I mean.’

  ‘Did you manage to get up the others? A rubber or two would help get us through, at least for the time being. Till the fun starts.’

  ‘I don’t think so, Roger. Can’t get the sullen beggars rounded up. Skulking.’

  ‘Bad show. We’d have thrashed ’em.’

  ‘Nonsense, old boy. They’d have murdered us. Positively.’

  ‘You’re a fool to yourself, dear. I never leave anything about in my cabin. Items walk.’

  ‘Oh, I know. You can’t trust any of them an inch. Damn good hiding would do the trick.’

  ‘Monica! Monica! Over here.’

  ‘Strike now, would be my advice.’

  ‘Lance the boil, I suppose you mean?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘While the iron, so to speak …’

  ‘I’ll have another, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Wretched tub. Any news?’

  ‘All be ruined for the sake of a measly two bob.’

  ‘Ha’p’orth o’tar, and all that.’

  ‘Not actually dangerous, is it?’

  ‘No, no. Keeps them on their toes.’

  So draining was the atmosphere that the voices became mere listless gasps, rising above each conversation as a vapour which immediately dispersed. The effect was dull, mesmeric.

  ‘Wotcher, cock.’ It was one of Barnwell’s aircrew, at his own table. ‘Have a drink.’

  ‘No, thank you. I’m looking for someone.’

  ‘Aw, go on. Don’t you know it’s rude to refuse.’